Lakritz: Fringe candidates offer no real benefits

The phrase “fringe festival” should refer to a summer theatre event, not to a race to be mayor of Calgary.

The law states that anyone who can drum up 100 signatures for their nomination papers and a $500 deposit is eligible to run for mayor. It has to be this way in a democracy. But, at the same time, when there are only two serious candidates for mayor, and the rest are on the fringe, destined to be the objects of derision, or outright ignored, then the race is a joke. And the joke demeans the office of mayor.

One of the earliest candidates to declare his intentions submitted them in a letter to the Herald scribbled in pencil on scraps of notebook paper and with spelling mistakes. C’mon. Nobody’s gonna take you seriously, buddy, when you do that. Why bother in the first place? This man dropped out of the race fairly early, thankfully.

Nothing reinforced the rather depressing evidence of the fringe factor better than an article Herald city hall reporter Jason Markusoff wrote Oct. 8 about a mayoral forum. Markusoff described the fringe contingent as containing, “a guy who saw the flood coming, a guy who spent much of his opening statement attacking the Herald, one who admits he won’t win, one who calls the Peace Bridge a ‘cheap knock-off,’ one who brought a stack of cheat sheets to read from, and one who warned of God’s vengeance raining upon Calgary and its Muslim mayor.”

Candidate Larry Heather said at the forum: “I firmly believe it is a mistake for Calgarians to endorse a swearing-in for office on the Qur’an. The values from that book do not produce a basis for maintaining a western democracy.” Heather then cited a biblical warning regarding “destruction if people stray from God’s will,” Markusoff wrote.

Another candidate was Bruce Jackman, a city worker, who was later forced to withdraw because he’d neglected to ask for a leave of absence in time to run for office. Candidate Milan Papez complained because the Herald had written about his dust-up with the Alberta Human Rights Commission over racist remarks in his pamphlet. Carter Thomson uttered platitudes about traffic being bad and small business getting the short end of the stick from city hall.

Another fringe candidate, Sandra Hunter, stayed away from the forum on principle because, as she wrote in the Huffington Post: “I believe that those days have come, and gone. I believe that the way, today, to connect with potential voters, is through NEW media.”

Hunter wasn’t exactly a Johnny one-note; she was more like a Janey two-note. Her two issues were the legalization of marijuana — which earned her the title Mayor-juana — and the effects of logging on water resources. “It is time to have a marijuana dispensary next to a liquor store next to a casino — and tax them equally,” Hunter wrote. Marijuana falls under federal, not civic jurisdiction. And not a lot of logging goes on in Calgary — unless there’s something going on in Confederation Park at night that we don’t know about. So why did she waste her time and ours?

Now, all this is generally good for a laugh. But why should we be laughing? The mayor of Calgary is at the head of a city of more than one million people and oversees a $3-billion budget. The mayoral race doesn’t deserve to be dragged down to the level of a comic sketch. Yet, that’s exactly what these frivolous candidates do to it.

It’s no different elsewhere, either. When I lived in Winnipeg, a fringe candidate in every election was a man named Walter Diawol. He was a hoarder whose backyard was filled with old appliances and other junk. The city would regularly send him notices to clean up his yard, which he regularly ignored, so city workers would come by with a front-end loader and cart the junk away. Then, he’d start filling up his backyard with more junk and creating another eyesore. His name would inevitably appear on the ballot at election time.

Frankly, there needs to be a little self-censoring among those whose campaign theme song appears to be Send in the Clowns. If they were honest with themselves and had a drop of respect for the responsibility and gravity of the office, for the voters and for the issues, they would stay out of the race. It’s really a shame there were only two candidates of any gravitas running for mayor this time. Naheed Nenshi’s popularity no doubt made a number of otherwise qualified candidates decide not to run, but voters didn’t have a long enough list to choose from.

Not even the prospect of losing their non-refundable $500 deposits was enough to deter the fringe types — according to the Local Authorities Election Act, the deposit is returned only if the person is elected or obtains a certain share of the vote.

These people may not be making a mockery of democracy, but they are making a mockery of the position of mayor. I think it’s sad.

Naomi Lakritz is a Herald columnist.

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